Midgardsormr

This giant serpent of divine origins sends a giant shock-wave through the earth.

—Final Fantasy VI PlayStation esper section

Midgardsormr(ミドガルズオルム, Midogaruzuorumu?), also known as Terrato, Midgar Swarm, or Midgar Zolom, is a recurring serpent creature in the Final Fantasy series. It has appeared as a summon on a couple of occasions, as well as an enemy on a number of others. Its debut was as a summon in Final Fantasy VI.

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Midgardsormr, originally named Terrato in the English SNES version due to name-size limitations, is an esper obtained in Yeti's Cave. Once finding it, a fight will ensue with Yeti. Midgardsormr's summon spell, Abyssal Maw (Earth Aura in the original SNES version), costs 40 MP, deals Earth-elemental damage to all opponents. Its Spell Power is 93, and it is unblockable, but it cannot hit flying targets. Midgardsormr teaches Quake (x3), Graviga (x1) and Tornado (x1). It provides HP +30% at level up.

Midgar Zolom appears in the swamp by Mythril Mine next to the Chocobo Farm. When the player first gets to this point in the game, the Midgar Zolom is difficult to defeat, so it is easiest to avoid it by crossing the swamp on a chocobo. Midgar Zolom will usually flick a party member out of battle, who will be alive on the side of the swamp if the other party members are KO'd preventing a Game Over. Midgar Zolom uses the E.SkillBeta.

If defeated, Midgar Zolom will respawn in the swamp.

After crossing the swamp, the party will discover a dead Midgar Zolom impaled on a tree, which they presume was the work of Sephiroth.

Midgardsormr, mistranslated as Midgar Swarm in the PlayStation version, is a summon spell used by Elidibus. It's a powerful non-elemental magickal attack that hits a single square up to four squares from the caster.

From a technical perspective, its art is merely a recolored version of the Salamander summon.

Jorgandr is a boss who resides in Jorgandr Desert. He is fought after the Talon crashes in the desert. There is a chance of encountering Jorgandr in a random battle in the Crevasse, and it gives the same amount of experience points as it did when Arthur fought it as a boss in Jorgandr Desert. Jorgandr is immune to all status ailments, strong against physical damage, and strong against all elemental damage. His only weakness is the special property the Mystic Swords possess.

[view·edit·purge]The name hails from Norse mythology, in which Midgardsormr (Old Norse: Miðgarðsormr; also known as the World Serpent or Jörmungandr) was the middle child of Loki and a giantess named Angrboda. Odin threw it into the ocean that encircles Midgard and it eventually grew large enough to reach around the entire world and bite its own tail. It had been foreseen that on the day of Ragnarök it would battle with its arch-nemesis, Thor, the god of thunder. The sky would darken from the poison mist emitted by Midgardsormr, and the battle would end in the death of both. Thor would first kill Midgardsormr and then stagger nine steps before dying from its poison.

"Terrato" may be related to the Italian word sotterrato, which means "buried", or perhaps it may be related to "terato" from the Greek teras, meaning monster. It seems to have been used in place of "Midgardsormr" (a name Ted Woolsey would have caught) due to the hard eight-character limit affecting esper names in the SNES version of Final Fantasy VI. [view·edit·purge]"Terra" is the Latin word for "Earth". It is also present in some Latin-derived languages such as Italian and Portuguese.

"Midgar Zolom" is discussed on its page; "Midgar Swarm" is likewise an artifact of the infamously low quality of the translation of the PS version of Final Fantasy Tactics, with the translator not picking up on the mythological reference and interpreting (ズオルム, zuorumu?) as "swarm".